Silver Aegis #5, the Conclusion *Edited to clean up some redundancies in the script*

Silver Aegis #5

“The Secret Origin of the Silver Aegis: From Deep within the Plot Hole”

Twenty four hours ago:

“Curse him!” Madame HERPES threw her martini glass at the monitor showing the Silver Aegis caroming his shield off of several of her minions, “Curse that red, white, and blue busybody! That was our fourth cell he has shut down within Parodiopolis! Soon our presence in that city will be negligible! He must be stopped!”

“But how, mistress?” the uniformed agent who attended the virago had the temerity to inquire; “The Silver Aegis strikes without warning, and fights like a man possessed!”

SLAP! “Fool! It is obvious HERPES must track the hero down and eliminate him before he can prepare for us! But how do we find him?”

“I believe I can help you with that, woman!”

“What’s this? Appearing on the screen, the image of a man wrapped in red robes! Who-?”

“I am the Red Saracen, and though I am loathe to bargain with one such as yourself, it is obvious we share a common enemy, the accursed Silver Aegis!”

Madame HERPES flinched at the insult, but held back any retort. There was something in the man’s eyes that gave her caution, “Yes, I have heard of you, Saracen. You seek to destroy the powers of the Occidental world and create a global caliphate with you at its head. Very ambitious!”

“Do not attempt to use your wiles on me, you decadent Jezebel! I have only interrupted your communications to propose a bargain. I can offer you information to aid you in the location of the Silver Aegis, in exchange for some information of HERPES’s own.”

“Which would be what, you deranged dervish?”

“All of your files on the Celestial Tchotchke.”

“Hahahaha!” the terrorist leader threw back her head and laughed, “The Tchotchke is a myth, a legend. You would be better off searching for Aladdin’s magic lamp!”

“Then it will cost you nothing to pass on that knowledge to me,” Red Saracen noted smarmily, “Transfer the data, and I will tell you how to find the Aegis.”

Once the exchange was completed and the villain cut communication, Madame HERPES stroked her neck contemplatively, “The Saracen is definitely one that bears watching, it would seem. Our paths are sure to cross again.”

“Do you think he is right, mistress? Do you think this Josie Hart will be able to learn the secrets of the Silver Aegis?” her attendant asked.

“If anyone could, it’s that awful reporter. But the real question is how do we learn what she does without attracting suspicion? Ah! I have it,” sweeping her arm dramatically, she points to the door, “Bring me Agent Anonymous!”

Now:

The Pneumovator was a vacuum powered personal transport system designed to allow rapid movement from one section of SPUD’s hidden ultrastructure to another. What it was not designed to do was preserve a woman’s modesty if she were wearing any form of skirt.

“I mean it, you two; keep those eyes closed until we get out of this oversized vacuum tube!!” Josie Hart hollered over the sound of rushing air.

“Miss Hart, I assure you, I would never even consider using this situation as an opportunity to steal a look at your undergarments.”

“Really? Why not?”

Before the Silver Aegis could answer the conduit he, Josie Hart, and her photographer Lewis Hollander were racing through took a ninety degree turn upward. The trio flew from the Pneumovator into a vast open space, only to be propped up from underneath by a hover platform once gravity had halted their climb.

“Wow! That was one crazy ride, Clyde!” Lewis exclaimed before his attention focused on another floating disc, “Look, there’s somebody else here!”

“Very astute, young man! With such finely honed observation skills it’s shocking you toil away for so outmoded and antiquated an information disseminating medium!” the beetle-browed man in the labcoat and goggles drew himself up to his full height, “I am Doctor Wilberforce Malevio Drang, the world’s greatest authority on para-physics. And Agent Scoggins has brought you to me so I may show you how his implausible presence here in our reality was achieved. The answer is: by my genius.”

Dr. Drang pressed a button on his handheld console, commanding the two discs to link, “Come here to the edge, prole, and bring your camera, for the next toggle I flip will unlock the gateway to the most fantastical revelation in all of human history! You will want to get the best possible view of… the Plot Hole!!!”

“Incredible! The floor, irising open, revealing… nothing! An immense, unfathomable void. And yet,” Josie paused, “I see things… almost out of the corner of my eye when I look down into it.”

“What your ‘seeing,’ my dear, what your mind is feverishly attempting to grasp, is the raw story stuff left over from an infinite number of discarded realities. The flotsam and jetsam of untold elseworlds, riven to pieces by the cosmic tides created by some great crisis. It is from within the abyss my instrumentation found and fished out the subject, Silver Aegis!”

Josie tore her gaze away from the all-devouring emptiness beneath her to look to the mailed hero, “Is that true? You came from down there?”

The man nodded stoically, “Yes. My world doesn’t exist anymore.”

“Untrue!” Dr. Drang exalted, “It exists, but as a protean mixture of disconnected narrative elements! I, like some Digital Age alchemist, melded those rudiments into what, er, who you see standing among us.

“Another man, less modest than myself, who accomplished such a feat might proffer that he had created LIFE!” he smirked before hitting the switch that would cover the Plot Hole.

“Good thing you’re just the portrait of humility, isn’t it, Doctor?” Josie Hart was furiously jotting notes in her flipbook, “Why is SPUD going through the expense to… trawl for superheroes in some giant hole of emptiness? What’s wrong with the heroes we already have?”

Each man had a different response.

Dr. Drang: “Why? For science, of course!”

Silver Aegis: “There’s nothing wrong with the Parodyverse’s superheroes. The government just-“

Agent Anonymous, disguised as Lewis Hollander: Who cares? Your leaders have just created one more hero for HERPES to slaughter! ‘Hail HERPES! Apply Penicillin and another rash shall come forth within six weeks!’”

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

“Lewis’s camera, firing bullets! How-?”

“I don’t know, Miss Hart, but it’s clear he needs to work on his aim,” Silver Aegis noted as he backflipped away from the barrage. The stunt took him off the platform, however, and he disappeared from view.

“Ha! I don’t have to hit you to kill you, you capering costumed clown!” The would-be assassin dropped his camera and began rummaging through his bag, “Now, to fulfill the second phase of my plans!”

WHOOMF!! “I think I’ve caught you counting your chickens, Agent Anonymous!” the super patriot quipped as he vaulted up from the other side of the disc and kicked the HERPES spy.

“Agent Anonymous? I’ve heard of him: a master imposter with a rap sheet as long as my arm!” POW! Josie Hart hit the Agent with a textbook right cross, “Stop wearing Lewis’s face and tell me what you’ve done with him- *gasp*!”

When the villain’s mask was snatched away, the revelation of his own featureless mien was enough to stun the seasoned reporter. Even the Aegis was taken aback. Agent Anonymous took advantage of the shock to don a circuitry laden gauntlet and punch Silver Aegis, “This Doom Glove amplifies my strength by a factor of ten, making me powerful enough to rip you limb from limb! Stand still, so I may demonstrate!”

“Sorry, I make it a habit not to oblige fascist thugs!” Silver Aegis ducked another haymaker.

“Stop! Stop, you muscle headed Neanderthals!” Dr. Drang objected, “Your fisticuffs are playing havoc with the platform’s equilibrium!”

“Relax, Doctor,” Josie snatched the scientist by the collar and dragged him to the disc adjacent to them, “Just hit those switched on that console there, and we’ll be free and clear of danger.”

“Your allies desert you, Silver Aegis,” Agent Anonymous crowed as he choked the hero with both hands, “Just as your senses are sure to. Then, I will capture your friends, and bring them to HERPES High Command! All of SPUD’s secrets will be ours for the taking!”

“Nrgh!” the Silver Aegis struggled to pry his enemy’s powerful grip free from his throat before deciding to change tactics, “Didn’t.. I … warn you once… about thinking “BUTT! “ahead?”

Silver Aegis caught the staggering villain before the blow to his cranium could knock him off the platform and onto the steel floor stories below. That would be the extent of his charity, however.

WHAM! BAM! SLAM!

Josie Hart watched the Aegis sling the unconscious HERPES minion over his shoulder, “I hope you didn’t put Agent Anonymous out for too long, because I have some questions for him.”

“As do we, Miss Hart, as do we,” the hero stated.

Josie was not allowed to witness SPUD’s interrogation of Agent Anonymous, (“for reasons of national security”), but she was quickly updated on the whereabouts and condition of her coworker. The real Lewis Hollander was found subdued and unconscious in his own studio apartment, and brought immediately to Phantomhawk Memorial Hospital. Miss Hart was offered transportation to the medical center, which she accepted once learning it would afford her the opportunity for some follow up.

“Cherry ride,” she shouted into the ear of the Silver Aegis as the pair whizzed through the thoroughfares of Parodiopolis on his motorcycle, “A ’42 Harley Davidson XA. You rode these in the war?”

“Indeed we did. You have a good eye for bikes, Miss Hart,” the Silver Aegis complimented.

Josie hoped the hero mistook her blushing for wind burn, “I went undercover for three weeks with the Satin Satans’ Cycle Club; if I didn’t know my stuff those women would have drawn and quartered me.”

“You certainly have chosen a dangerous profession, if you don’t mind my saying.”

“Hey, I say it all the time, and Sol Spivy still won’t give me a raise,” Josie adjusted herself on the seat, “What’s going to happen to Agent Anonymous?”

“Well, once the M.O.D.O.H.s are finished questioning him, he’ll most likely be turned over to the Belgian government. They want first crack at prosecuting him.”

“M.O.D.O.H.s? Those would be the big headed guys on the hoverchairs?”

Silver Aegis gunned the bike’s engine to pass a slow moving milk truck, “Right again, Miss Hart. It stands for Mental Organisms Designed for Opportunistic Highjinks. They were rescued from a BALD research facility in Jakarta and since then have been working for us. They’re telepaths, you see, and that makes them excellent intelligence-gathering operatives.”

“So the government has a group of psychic spies on its payroll?”

“Better us than them, Miss Hart.”

“And WHO is THEM?” the reporter asked pointedly.

“The forces of evil. They don’t have the same names as those whom I fought in my time, on my world, but they still threaten us. You can find them every day on the front page of your own newspaper. And whether they’re cosmic dictators out to conquer the Earth or criminal masterminds looking to make money out of tragedy, whether they’re animal, vegetable, or mineral, it’s my job to help stop them.”

“That’s why SPUD brought you up from the Plot Hole.”

“Yes, they wanted an agent whose past couldn’t be used against him by the country’s enemies. A person without ties,” Silver Aegis slowed the Harley down and made the curve to the Phantomhawk Memorial ER entrance area.

“Sounds like they set you up to have a lonely life,” Josie noted as he stopped the engine and dropped the kickstand.

“Without them, I wouldn’t even be alive, just suppressed ideas floating in some weird type of limbo,” the Silver Aegis watched the woman climb off the bike and remove the helmet he had given her, “Besides, I’ve been keeping busy just trying to learn about the Parodyverse. There’s a great many differences between my world and yours.”

Josie shook out her hair, “That sounds like a full time job in of itself. Anytime you’re need help with an answer and want an unbiased source, feel free to give me a call.”

“I’ll do that. Thank you,” Silver Aegis smiled broadly and took the helmet from Josie’s hands.

“*gulp*. Don’t mention it. And thanks for the lift. Though, I suppose I should be honest and say that it wasn’t really necessary. My car was parked right outside the, the, wait: something’s wrong. I don’t remember where I left my car.”

“Don’t worry, Miss Hart, an agent of SPUD drove your car here and left it in the public parking area. The keys will be at the admittance desk.”

“Why can’t I remember where I left my car? There’s a gap in my memory, as if- M.O.D.O.H.s!” the realization finally dawned on her, “The M.O.D.O.H.s did something to my mind!”

“They only removed your knowledge of the location to the entrance of the SPUD secret headquarters, for your own protection as well as ours.”

The young woman trembled with rage, “Don’t you mean ‘we removed,’ you, you, you crumb!” SMACK! was the sound of Josie’s hand catching Silver Aegis flush on the cheek, “How dare you do this to me! This is censorship!”

The sentiment behind the slap seemed to hurt Scott Scoggins more than the act itself, “If we had wanted, SPUD could have erased your recollections of the day entirely, Miss Hart. It was decided instead to let you know the whole story, up to and including the memory suppression. I’m sorry if that’s not good enough. Give Mr. Hollander my regards.”

VRROOM

Josie Hart watched the Silver Aegis turn the motorcycle back around and into the Parodiopolis traffic

“There the man goes, after giving me the story of the century. A secret origin filled with suspense, pathos, awe, action, and duplicity. Yet, why does it feel so—EMPTY?” she wondered aloud.

The End.

Next: You gentle reader, get a choice. There are two possible adventures the Silver Aegis could undertake next. One begins a globe trotting search for the most dangerous object of our time. The other is a generations spanning tale of vengeance delayed. Will our next title be “The Curse of the U Wolf” or “Black Tie Optional, Mayhem Mandatory”? Exercise your constitutional rights and vote now, Effendi!

Post By Silver Aegis notes its not necessary to reread this Sun Apr 15, 2007 at 10:44:13 am EDT	Subject Silver Aegis #5, the Conclusion Edited to clean up some redundancies in the script Originally Silver Aegis #5, the Conclusion	In Reply To Silver Aegis Sun Apr 15, 2007 at 01:47:52 am EDT

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